I took eBay off all my lenses. No, I didn't have a bad experience with them directly, but after adding them, I noticed a huge drop in Google traffic to those very lenses. One of my top lenses at the time, Fantasy: Castles, Dragons, and Wizards, was completely dropped by Google. It had a PR of 3 at the time, and I was frantically trying to figure out what I did wrong. My lighthouse and wolf lenses fell drastically, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I scoured the 'net' for a solution, and came up with very little. I did a 'site ban' check on my fantasy lens, and it wasn't banned by Google, they just dropped it. Perhaps it was penalized for some reason? All I did was add eBay modules, and not a lot of them, because I didn't want to junk up my lens. Finally, I did a keyword density check on it...and got 'cat' and 'seller' as the top keywords, also the phrase 'cat seller' as the top phrase of words. Huh? I didn't have either word in my text, so it must have been linked to eBay code. I suppose the Google crawlers thought I was trying to fool the public into thinking my lens was about one thing, when it was actually about 'cat sellers'. I honestly don't know. It's all I could come up with.
Well, all I could think to do was delete all the eBay modules on all my lenses and see what happened, and it worked. My lens got picked up by Google again, but started all over with a PR of 0, and my wolf and lighthouse lenses have shot up to the 3rd and 4th spot on my dashboard. I hate not offering eBay products, because they have some great collectibles at good prices, but for now, it's the best thing for me. I never made a sell from them anyways.
Australian Food Specialties
15 years ago
Posts
Google can't see eBay modules because they loaded dynamically by the web browser. This could just be a coincidence. It might be worth adding some eBay modules to your lenses again, and seeing what happens...
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI hate to sound like I'm disagreeing with Fluff, but my Lens about Installing Auto Backup Cameras dropped right off the front page of Google for the phrase "auto backup camera" and apparently has lost all viability on Google. It seemed like this happened after I included an eBay module.
ReplyDeleteI have an eBay Partner Network ID, so I just switched to an eBay search widget from Widget Squid to see if that makes a difference
Wow! My Lens is back on Google after replacing the eBay module with an eBay widget from Widget Squid! I had also altered the main title, and the beginning of the Intro module, so I can tell Google had gone back over it.
ReplyDeleteThe traffic is already rolling in again! Thanks for posting this, I think it really made a hug difference!
It may stink to have to resort to removing a possible revenue share with Squidoo, but I think it's more important to get the traffic back! This Lens was getting over 200 hits a week before it dropped off!
Yeah, my Fantasy lens has jumped to the 3rd spot and is getting the best traffic. I ran a keyword density check and "cat seller" isn't on there at all. My top keyword is actually castle, like it should be. I'm not an affiliate of eBay, so maybe I should be. I'd rather use the Squidoo module to "give back", but not at the expense of my traffic. That doesn't help either of us.
ReplyDeleteYou know this is interesting! Curiously I use the eBay module on many of my lenses and now that I think about it, those particular lenses don't seem to rank as well as others or get the traffic. I'd like to see the scientific evidence on this to make a determination.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see your traffic picked up.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, you're not going to be able to use the eBay widget for much longer. EPN have changed their policies, and you can now only have affiliate links from your own websites (not lenses).
See SquidU forum for details...